LOIS-BUJOLD Digest 918
Topics covered in this issue include:
1) Re: baby selection; math books; newsfroups; librarians
by Charles Dyer
2) Temporary Unsubscription
by "Kathryn H."
3) Re: the cursive debate: pro
by norya-+AT+-juno.com (Jennifer A Ford)
4) Re: Lancelot and Arthur (was Miles and a married woman)
by norya-+AT+-juno.com (Jennifer A Ford)
5) Biology in SF (OT)
by gov.legis-+AT+-saipan.com (doug muir)
6) Re: Miles' reading (was First book)
by "Scott Raun"
7) Re: My Library - OT
by Elizabeth Celeste
8) [Fwd: Fanfic, speculation, and Star Trek]
by Lois McMaster Bujold
9) Re: Newsgroup
by Nicolette van der Walt
10) Re: How to voluntarily split an infinitive
by Peter Newman
11) Re: Heaven's Reach - OT
by Nicolette van der Walt
12) RE: Re: Book Ideas
by "Brenda K. Taylor"
13) Educational Systems
by "James M. BRYANT, G4CLF"
14) Deliberate Obscurity
by "James M. BRYANT, G4CLF"
15) RE: Educational Systems
by Nicolette van der Walt
16) The worst thing that could happen to Miles
by Pat
17) Re: FanFic in the LMB Universe
by Pat
18) Re: Educational System/Traditions (Semi-OT)
by Pat
19) Re: Biology in SF (OT)
by Pat
20) Re: The worst thing that could happen to Miles
by Brad De Long
21) fanfic
by Pat
22) Re: Miles' Reading habits
by PWrede6492-+AT+-aol.com
23) Finding SF (OT)
by EBBizot-+AT+-aol.com
24) Re: Re: Book Ideas
by "Tony Rapson"
25) Re: Ilyan and Haroche
by "Tony Rapson"
26) Re: The worst thing that could happen to Miles
by Pat
27) Re: Ilyan and Haroche
by Chuckson_M_Yokota-+AT+-amat.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 22:42:31 -0500
From: Charles Dyer
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: baby selection; math books; newsfroups; librarians
Message-ID:
At 21:50 -0500 15/10/97, Anton Sherwood wrote:
[snip]
>
>Most newsgroups were split off from other newsgroups, not "promoted"
>from mailing-lists. As in: "Can we please give the Robert Jordan
>fans their own group? It's getting hard to find the posts about
>*real* sf." So if you want to gain support for a Bujold group,
>flood rec.arts.sf.written with posts about Miles.
You mean more than there are now?
[snip]
>: There's also a gull in Britain, which can
>: breed with a gull in Iceland, which can breed with gulls in Greenland, and
>: so on all the way around the Northern Hemisphere back to Britain. But the
>: two ends of the chain can't breed with each other. Quick: is that one
>: species, two, or many? If so, how many, and where do you draw the line?
>
>Do "two ends of the chain" mean opposite sides of the circle,
>or is there a discontinuity in the circle?
The two ends. One is the herring gull, one the black-backed gull. They
don't look much alike, they breed at different times of year, and one is a
lot smaller than the other. But if you follow the chain there's an unbroken
relationship al around the world.
Harbor, n. A place where ships taking shelter from storms are exposed to
the fury of the Customs.
-- The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce
Die spammers, die.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 21:07:02
From: "Kathryn H."
To:
Subject: Temporary Unsubscription
Message-ID: <3.0.1.16.19971015210702.2cdf9822-+AT+-king.cts.com>
I regret to announce I am temporarily unsubscribing due to time conflicts
related to my upcoming move and the high traffic on the list recently.
--Kathryn H.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 23:18:56 -0500
From: norya-+AT+-juno.com (Jennifer A Ford)
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: the cursive debate: pro
Message-ID: <19971015.231857.12214.3.norya-+AT+-juno.com>
Lizah said:
>Jennifer has inspired me to do
>what I should have done in school - practice my handwriting.
Thank you very much! (and i agree with the poster who said fountain pens
are even better -- I'm a pen freak & collect them)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 21:53:13 -0500
From: norya-+AT+-juno.com (Jennifer A Ford)
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: Lancelot and Arthur (was Miles and a married woman)
Message-ID: <19971015.231857.12214.0.norya-+AT+-juno.com>
>>> Would've been more interesting if Lancelot had fallen in love with
>Arthur .
>>In MISTS OF AVALON, I'm told he did....
Ellen:
> Nope. IIRC, it was the other way around (but only came up
>during one incident, with potential offspring as an excuse).
No, it was Lancelot falling for Arthur -- he confesses this to Morgan
after Camelot falls when he tells her of the little menage he & Arthur &
Guinevere shared supposedly for Guin's sake (as in Arthur was willing to
do anything for her) -- but Lancelot found himself wanting the other
third of the trois more.
-Jennifer
"Omigod! They killed Kenny!" -South Park
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 14:57:23 +1000
From: gov.legis-+AT+-saipan.com (doug muir)
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Biology in SF (OT)
Message-ID:
>I'd make one cautious caveat: the Hainish, as part of an advanced
>technological, historological, culture, may have "cultural"
>constraints on natural selection which could alter the course of
>evolution from that predicted by standard population biology.
Yes, this may well be true. And I thought about it.
However, note again that the initial modifications have been in place for
evolutionary time... hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of years.
I might be willing to accept that the Hainish have been civilized for most
or all of that time (although there are hints of at least one regression to
a preindustrial level). But civilized or not, they must have gone through
dozens if not hundreds of different cultures in that time... a warlike
culture succeeded by a peaceful one, a static theocracy replaced by an
innovative renaissance, et et et et cetera. Look at what we've gone
through on Earth in a mere 5,000 years or so. Thus I strongly suspect that
cultural constraints would tend to cancel out in the very long run, leaving
the basic biological imperatives free to work.
You come close to an issue that I carefully avoided, though. That is: what
would be the evolutionary effect of three million years of full,
human-level intelligence? Not counting genetic engineering, or advanced
technology -- just intelligence.
I can't answer that easily; I don't think anyone can. But I'm quite sure
that there would be major effects. To give just one, note that the size of
human teeth has been steadily decreasing over the last million years or so,
a trend that has continued even after the emergence of fully modern
humans... our Cro-Magnon ancestors, fifteen thousand years ago, were
slightly but definitely toothier than you and me. The best guess it that
this is thanks to some pretty basic technologies like pottery (which lets
you boil things, making them much easier to chew). I doubt that continued
evolution would eliminate human teeth altogether, but they could certainly
get quite a bit smaller (as anyone who has ever had an impacted wisdom
tooth will tell you).
There's also little doubt that we have tougher immune systems than our
ancestors, at least where crowd diseases are concerned. A consequence of
agricultural civilization rather than intelligence, granted.
It's also been suggested that we are somewhat weenier. Ice Age skeletons
tend to be pretty robust. It's hard to tell whether this is genetics or
environment -- those folks lived a hard life -- but it seems plausible to
think that increased tool use and the domestication of animals has relaxed
selection for big muscles and strong bones.
Personally. I also think that an intelligent species would tend to become
more intelligent, slowly, gradually, with intraspecific competition as the
engine of change. I admit I could be wrong. But species that have evolved
towards specialization in a particular niche, tend to continue getting
better at that specialization, over evolutionary time, until they bump up
against basic anatomical or environmental constraints. And we are a
specialized species, just as much as anteaters, vultures or hummingbirds.
One often hears that human beings are generalists, but this is simply not
true. We are specialists in intelligence.
And I don't agree with those who claim that human intelligence has topped
out because our brains can't get any bigger. There's a fair amount of
evidence to suggest that we could achieve further incremental improvements
by rewiring some of what we've already got.
To give just one example, most women have smaller brains than most men --
not only absolutely smaller, but smaller relative to body mass, too. Yet
women are as intelligent as men (okay, it's a weird, alien, frequently
incomprehensible sort of intelligence, but there's just as much of it).
It's now being suggested, with perfect seriousness, that male brains are
inefficient and overdesigned.
Note also that some birds have scary good lightweight brains. Ravens are
roughly as smart as dogs, though their brains are a LOT smaller, both
absolutely and relative to body size.
One final note: highly successful species tend to speciate, dividing into
multiple daughter species. One would expect a three million year old
intelligent species to have produced produced new, related species more
than once -- and, again, that's without considering the influence of
genetic engineering. Specialization is not an obstacle to this, by the
way; there are several species of anteater, and lots of hummingbirds.
I hear someone in the back say that speciation requires reproductive
isolation, and that intelligence tends to break down geographical
barriers... yes, correct. But reproductive isolation need not be
geographical; it is possible for a new species to evolve without it
(there's even a term, sympatric speciation, as opposed to allopatric
speciation).
Phew. I have a job...
>Secondly, I'd say that such ideas as you have set forth seem naturals
>for SF stories.
Near-human hominid races, with an inhuman psychology? Well, they've been
done from time to time.
...yep. Poul Anderson again. "Winter of the World" and "Starfog".
Brin's "Glory Season", though I have some problems with it.
Niven's last two "Ringworld" books, though he's not really interested in
biology or psuchology.
Foster's "The Game-Players of Zan", a half-forgotten 70s SF novel that was
really quite good. His "ler" are highly intuitive and synthetic but have
trouble with analytical thinking. Their emotional responses are also
subtly but interestingly different from human norms.
LeGuin herself, in "Left Hand of Darkness".
Eleanor Arneson (?), "A Woman of the Iron People".
I know there are others.
>I'd say it's a pity LeGuin didn't explore them, but I
>don't think we can chastise her too strongly: she's explored plenty of
>fertile SFnal ideas as it is. It does seem common in SF for ideas,
>especially "throwaway" ideas, to be about half thought through.
Yes indeed, agree, agree.
>Iain M. Banks postulates similar alterations in the "humans" of his
>Culture universe, and similarly does not follow through on the
>population biology/natural selection consequences.
Partial agreement. First, we don't know how long the Culture have been
hypertechnological. Second, the Culture is just that -- a culture.
Cultural constraints could certainly affect evolution in all sorts of ways,
especially if the culture remains stable over evolutionary time. Third,
the Minds might be a serious stabilizing influence.
I'm outa here.
Doug M.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 00:09:48 +0000
From: "Scott Raun"
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: Miles' reading (was First book)
Message-ID: <199710160510.AAA14521-+AT+-alyssa.iaxs.net>
On 15 Oct 97 at 17:22, Ellen Blackburn on
wrote:
> And don't forget his Shakespeare spouting while under fast-penta.
> You might read Shakespeare just for lack of anything else to do,
> but you wouldn't memorize it just for that reason.
While Lois never _explicitly_ states it, I've gotten the impression
that Miles, and Ivan - and by implication, Aral - have eidetic or
near-eidetic memories.
One one point, Miles makes a comment something to the effect of 'Ivan
inherited the family memory, but never organized anything. How could
anyone stand to live like that? Never mind, remembering Ivan's room.'
(The quote is accurate ONLY in intent - can anyone find and post the
'real' wording?)
This would indicate - at least to me - that Miles probably _could_
have read through Shakespeare once, and memorized it. Possibly a
little work to do so, but not much.
Scott Raun
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 01:06:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Elizabeth Celeste
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: My Library - OT
Message-ID:
On Wed, 15 Oct 1997, Martha Bartter wrote:
> The thought of snuggling down in bed with a computer does not
> exactly sound comfortable. Not at all warm & cozy like with a good
> (paperback) book.
Actually, It's not half bad. Believe it or not.
I finally got my long cherished laptop this July. Living in my parents
house, I have a bedroom dominated by a huge kingsize waterbed (it's a
__very_ long story). And I don't have a desk.
Surpisingly, It works out really well to snuggle up in bed, propped up on
an infinate number of pillows, and hook up the conputer to go online.
It's even warm- the laptop generates a bit of heat.
I do put on a plain plastic lapdesk of the kind sold everywhere-- keeps
the comptuer a little more stable to be on the flat surface, and
everything cooler- I can easily imagine it over heating on the quilts.
I'm in heaven anyway.
Elizabeth, who got a color flatbed scanner and a camera for her birthday.
No excuse whatsover for not putting up a web page any more.
jubilee-+AT+-grove.ufl.edu Elizabeth Celeste etwitche-+AT+-helios.acomp.usf.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"For tonight I went running through the screen doors of discretion"
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 01:04:39 -0500
From: Lois McMaster Bujold
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: [Fwd: Fanfic, speculation, and Star Trek]
Message-ID: <3445AE77.5F84-+AT+-mn.uswest.net>
Message-ID: <3443A808.2EA-+AT+-mn.uswest.net>
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 12:12:40 -0500
From: Lois McMaster Bujold
Reply-To: lmbujold-+AT+-mn.uswest.net
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win95; I)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Fanfic, speculation, and Star Trek
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Hi Folks --
Pat passed on the fanfic/speculation question, and in checking it out I
ran across another issue; I'll take a moment to address all three.
Yes, I am a fan-ac friendly author; I did indeed write fan-fic *in my
teens*. Recent legal concerns in genre fiction have rather thrown a
wrench in the deal. In general, it's considered safer for a writer not
to view fan fic centered on their work, so lately, and most reluctantly,
I've taken to avoiding it. Feel free to write amongst yourselves,
though.
It is far less clear where innocent discussion and speculation segue
into creation. Pat classifies all this as "gossip", and is undismayed
by it; she considers only something written into actual story form to be
of legal significance. While I am not especially legally paranoid, my
own concern to guard my own originality is great. Every idea that you
guys come up with and discuss at length is, in my view, thereby
demonstrated as too obvious for me to use. Since there are a bunch of
you, and very bright too, given time you could in theory collectively
appropriate and remove from my consideration in this way every possible
plot development I might come up with for unwritten future novels.
Sigh. This way lies unemployment.
(I suppose this really only applies to the 2% you get right. The 98%
you get wrong is a null-factor, without effect.)
KOMARR is now open, however, for speculation, since it is already
finished, yea even unto the final revisions. (But not the cover art.) I
will be extremely depressed if you manage to anticipate every surprise I
thought I had arranged for you, but there are no legal problems here.
(Sort of like cooking a big dinner, and discovering your guests all
stopped for hot fudge sundaes on the way to your house...)
Latest guess on hardcover pub is next June, by the way; Baen will
doubtless put a few chapters up on their website before then, at which
point it's fair to regard it as really open season.
Now, this Star Trek thing. This is going to be the third time I have
knocked it on the head *this year*. It's getting profoundly
irritating. *SoH is not now, and has never been, a Star Trek story.*
Six *years* before I started writing it, to entertain myself driving to
work, I had worked out a vaguely ST-universe two
enemies-lost-on-planetside scenario. You have only my word for this, by
the way, as I am reporting on my private thoughts here. Nothing was
ever written. When I did sit down in 1982 to write my original novel, I
used some elements from this scenario in the opening chapters, while
also drawing on not less than my whole life and everything I'd learned
in it. By the time the first word hit paper, I wanted to write my *own*
books, thank you very much. And I did.
While I do not wish to gratuitously insult Trek fans -- I consider them
a potential market for character-centered action-adventure stories with
something of the same economic lust that early 20th Century
industrialists used to look on the population of China, if only I could
push my product across their mental barriers -- the suggestion that one
is incapable of making up one's own stories is perhaps the most deadly
insult you can level at a writer. Please refrain from doing so. And
when you encounter this Star Trek rumor again -- and it seems to be
everywhere -- kindly disabuse the perpetrators for me. I don't seem to
be able to catch up with them all.
Ta, Lois.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 08:23:00 +0200
From: Nicolette van der Walt
To: "'Bujold List'"
Subject: Re: Newsgroup
Message-ID: <199710160619.HAA29364-+AT+-vanyel.herald.co.uk>
Happy Birthday to you too!!!
----------
From: Jean Lamb
To: Nicolette van der Walt
Subject: Re: Newsgroup
Date: 15/ 10/ 97 7:29PM
At 11:11 AM 10/15/97 +0100, you wrote:
>NO!
>
>James - the verbose
DITTO!
Jean Lamb, from Klamath Falls, Oregon, tlambs-+AT+-magick.net
http://www.sff.net/people/jeanlamb. Just hired to work part-time at a
library near me! (whip me, beat me, MAKE me get paid for working with
books!).
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me...
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 22:37:02 -0800
From: Peter Newman
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: How to voluntarily split an infinitive
Message-ID: <3445B60E.656C-+AT+-alaska.net>
Pat Mathews wrote
> As Winston Churchill said, "This is the sort of nonsense up with which > I will not put."
IIRC the exact quote was "That, sir, is the sort of errant pedantry up
with which I will not put." to someone who corrected him.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 08:51:00 +0200
From: Nicolette van der Walt
To: "'Bujold List'"
Subject: Re: Heaven's Reach - OT
Message-ID: <199710160646.HAA00724-+AT+-vanyel.herald.co.uk>
Neil Dobson recommended:
The Neutronium Wizard by Peter F. Hamilton which has
Very 'hard SF' though, Elves need not apply.
I can second that recommendation. Hamilton borders on cyberpunk.
Similar too to _Catspaw_ by Joan Vinge.
Nik
Believe in magic, believe in lore
Legend & myth, and the hand that guides.
- The Mission
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 01:20:59 -0600
From: "Brenda K. Taylor"
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: RE: Re: Book Ideas
Message-ID: <19971016072055672.AAA184-+AT+-tc1-27.utah-inter.net>
>One of the people who was part of Monty Python's Flying Circus was on
>TV last night and was asked "What's the airspeed of an unladen swallow?"
>and didn't get it.....
>
>Wish I could remember his name...Played Ken in "A Fish Called Wanda" did
>several PBS traveling type shows.....You know who I'm talking about, don't
>you?
>
>Gudrun
>
Michael Palin!
--Brenda the Blood Banker, who has the entirety of his "Pole to Pole" on video
---Brenda the Blood Banker
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 06:20:19 -0100
From: "James M. BRYANT, G4CLF"
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Educational Systems
Message-ID: <3.0.16.19971016055303.0a0fa0ee-+AT+-pop.wokingham.luna.net>
Nicholas Rosen says:-
>Harra Csurik doesn't seem to harrassed by curriculum
>facilitators and vice principals and whatnot.
They wouldn't dare!
If she couldn't handle 'em herself (unlikely) she
wouldn't hesitate to appeal to her Count - which
would have Miles and Cordelia after them.
Few curriculum facilitators have faced the Dendarii
and lived to tell of it.
James - who would love to see a copy of Harra's curriculum
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 06:20:21 -0100
From: "James M. BRYANT, G4CLF"
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Deliberate Obscurity
Message-ID: <3.0.16.19971016061630.4187a0ee-+AT+-pop.wokingham.luna.net>
Anton Sherwood says (of maths reference books):-
>It's much harder than it ought to be to find math books
>that contain neither baby-talk nor an impenetrable hedge
>of thorny integrals.
Just recently I was driven to write an article called
"A non-mathematical description of sigma-delta ADCs".
These are simple little beasts but the complete maths
is horrid - and all the introductory texts I could
find started with several pages of partial differential
equations and went downhill from there. I managed to
tell people how they work in five pages with NO maths.
It was hard work to write - but is easy to read. Any
engineer or physicist could understand it and many
lay readers with just a little background in spectral
analysis could as well.
The problem is that too many people think that it is
clever to be arcane. A recent study (and I wish I could
find the lost reference as I despise people who quote
"studies" but can't cite sources - can anyone help?)
showed that PhD theses in turgid, hard to understand,
language tended to get higher grades than stuff which
was easy to understand ("I can understand it - it can't
be very clever!")
James - who will never be a professor - he writes too clearly
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 13:37:00 +0200
From: Nicolette van der Walt
To: "'Bujold List'"
Subject: RE: Educational Systems
Message-ID: <199710161132.MAA10146-+AT+-vanyel.herald.co.uk>
Nicholas Rosen says:-
>Harra Csurik doesn't seem to harrassed by curriculum
>facilitators and vice principals and whatnot.
The closest any educational inspector is going to get to Silvy Vale is
on the other end of a powerstat.
"What? Go out to inspect a school with twenty kids in that uncivilized
backwater? When I've got all these other city schools to keep tabs on?"
Nik
Believe in magic, believe in lore,
Legend & myth, and the hand that guides.
- The Mission
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 07:08:44 -0900 (PDT)
From: Pat
To: Lois Bujold Fandom
Subject: The worst thing that could happen to Miles
Message-ID:
I came up with this while reading MEMORY, the part where someone
brings up the possibility of Laisa's family wanting influence over
Gregor. Don't worry about the plot - it's a lot older than I am and Lois
is extremely familiar with it already, but here goes -
Aral and Cordelia are dead; Miles is on his own. Gregor dies
suddenly, leaving Miles as Regent for his minor heirs. Either Laisa's
kindred or some equally powerful Barrayaran family who would be a
disaster as rulers are opposed to him. Then someone (Dr. Canaba?) comes
to Miles with indisuptable proof that the boys are Not The True Heirs.
Miles has only one choice ....
Yes, of course you recognize the plot. What's worse, *so does miles*.
Patricia (Pat) Mathews
mathews-+AT+-unm.edu
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 07:12:50 -0900 (PDT)
From: Pat
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: FanFic in the LMB Universe
Message-ID:
On Wed, 15 Oct 1997, House of Unruly Fish wrote:
>
> As Pat Mathews has mentioned in a recent post, she had fanfic within it.
> Pat, could you tell us about sort of special arrangements you made with
> Lois about printing these?
>
> Susan (the Neon Nurse)
>
All this took place before the Great MZB Flap. I merely asked Lois
is a letter and she said "OK", adding that her characters were unique
enough that it was impossible to get the true flavor. In fact, the best
stories in there were jokes; after a while, the only plot anyone could
come up with was Gregor's wedding. One writer had him threaten to marry
Bel Thorne in order to get his way!
PS - as I heard it, the Great MZB Flap was not the fan's fault.
Someone - I think DAW - pushed the panic button over what began as a mere
attempt to negotiate the terms of MZB using part of a fanfic writer's
plot. I will say no more except to suggest checking the copyright pages
of some of her latest works.
> > >
> ++++++++++++++++++carosue-+AT+-iguana.ruralnet.net++++++++++++++++++
> Courtesy*Integrity*Perseverance*Self Control*Indomitable Spirit
>
> "Reach for the heavens and hope for the future; all that we can
> be, not what we are." 'The Eagle and the Hawk' John Denver
>
Patricia (Pat) Mathews
mathews-+AT+-unm.edu
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 07:20:03 -0900 (PDT)
From: Pat
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: Educational System/Traditions (Semi-OT)
Message-ID:
On Thu, 16 Oct 1997, Nicholas D. Rosen wrote:
>
> The Rosen plan for the reform of American education: hang ten educrats
> each day until the situation improves. To make sure we don't hang any
> useful ones, we can grant them benefit of clergy: No one hangs who knows
> how to read.
>
> ObBujold: Harra Csurik doesn't seem to harrassed by curriculum facili-
> tators and vice principals and whatnot.
>
My plan: give everyone in administration 30 kids, certified normal, and
a year to teach them to read, write, and do simple arithmetic. If at the
end of the year x% of the kids can't, the administrators are asked to
find honest work in the labor market.
As for Harra, she teaches in a frontier schoolhouse, one step up from
being one-room. Check out (again!) "The Little House On The Prairie."
The only thing that surprises me is that Silvy Vale hasn't asked her to
step down in favor of an unemployed single woman who needs the job, or
that the parents haven't harrassed her about her "progressive" ideas.>
Patricia (Pat) Mathews
mathews-+AT+-unm.edu
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 07:24:36 -0900 (PDT)
From: Pat
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: Biology in SF (OT)
Message-ID:
Doug - your description of Hainish sounded a lot like Vulcans, who are
also a pair-bonded species. A lot of it sounded like what I vaguely
remember as following upon being pair-bonded. Is this the case?
Patricia (Pat) Mathews
mathews-+AT+-unm.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 07:17:30 -0700
From: Brad De Long
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: The worst thing that could happen to Miles
Message-ID:
> I came up with this while reading MEMORY, the part where someone
>brings up the possibility of Laisa's family wanting influence over
>Gregor. Don't worry about the plot - it's a lot older than I am and Lois
>is extremely familiar with it already, but here goes -
> Aral and Cordelia are dead; Miles is on his own. Gregor dies
>suddenly, leaving Miles as Regent for his minor heirs. Either Laisa's
>kindred or some equally powerful Barrayaran family who would be a
>disaster as rulers are opposed to him. Then someone (Dr. Canaba?) comes
>to Miles with indisuptable proof that the boys are Not The True Heirs.
>Miles has only one choice ....
> Yes, of course you recognize the plot. What's worse, *so does miles*.
>
>Patricia (Pat) Mathews
>mathews-+AT+-unm.edu
You mean "Now is the winter of our discontent/ Made glorious summer by this
son of York;/ And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house/ In the deep
bosom of the ocean buried."?
Brad De Long
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 08:00:45 -0900 (PDT)
From: Pat
To: Lois Bujold Fandom
Subject: fanfic
Message-ID:
I could no more create in Lois' universe than I could fly. Except
for the last plot suggestion - ripped off from the Bard anyway - I think
it may be wise to cut out the speculation if it's causing difficulties.
At least I will.
Patricia (Pat) Mathews
mathews-+AT+-unm.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 10:46:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: PWrede6492-+AT+-aol.com
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: Miles' Reading habits
Message-ID: <971016103622_2056442409-+AT+-emout07.mail.aol.com>
>This sounds about right: He's been too driven to just kick back and pull
>open the latest LMB-equivalent (or a much tattered Georgette Heyer), open
>a beer and enjoy.
Uh -- what do you think he's been doing on all those long,
boring, dull, six-week round trips between Barrayar and
wherever? (When he doesn't have Sergeant Taura around
the way he did at the start of MEMORY, that is...)
Patricia C. Wrede
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 11:07:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: EBBizot-+AT+-aol.com
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Finding SF (OT)
Message-ID: <971016110628_862437381-+AT+-emout01.mail.aol.com>
Susan the Neon Nurse said:
> I went through a period in about what would be
>considered middle school age today where I turned from horse books and
>found that people could be interesting too. :)
Me too. I began reading sf in 5th grade, thanks to the combination of
finding Andre Norton on the library shelf and my teacher giving me _The
Hobbit_ when I had finished all the classroom "free reading" materials. But
it became my preferred reading material in middle school. I ran out of horse
books, had no interest whatsoever in teen romances (possibly because I had
skipped a grade and was younger than the other girls), didn't like the "boy's
books" about sports and cars, and ended up with sf by default. Though I also
remember reading _Gone With the Wind_ and most of Helen McInnes during this
period.
Betsy
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 10:38:11 -0500
From: "Tony Rapson"
To:
Subject: Re: Re: Book Ideas
Message-ID: <01bcda49$82873ca0$4e69cccf-+AT+-trapson.bok.com>
>On Wed, 15 Oct 1997, Thomas Stewart wrote:
>
>> People who just look blank when asked 'African or European
>> swallow?' quietly slip out of my address book, unless I think they might
>> be trainable (OK, read that as corruptible). People who understand the
>> really obscure references are cherished forever.
>
>One of the people who was part of Monty Python's Flying Circus was on
>TV last night and was asked "What's the airspeed of an unladen swallow?"
>and didn't get it.....
>
>Wish I could remember his name...Played Ken in "A Fish Called Wanda" did
>several PBS traveling type shows.....You know who I'm talking about, don't
>you?
>
>Gudrun
>
Michael Palin. I don't think he was in that scene, so maybe he wasn't as
aware of it as he would have been if he had participated. Also, although we,
as fan(atics), see the movie again and again, and remember that stuff much
better that the original participants.
(Overheard at a Star Trek convention: "Mr. Shatner! Remember that really
cool fight scene you had with that Klingon warrior . . . ")
Tony
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 10:45:46 -0500
From: "Tony Rapson"
To:
Subject: Re: Ilyan and Haroche
Message-ID: <01bcda4a$916ff580$4e69cccf-+AT+-trapson.bok.com>
From: Chuckson_M_Yokota-+AT+-amat.com
>I noticed something when I was rereading _Memory_. In one scene, Miles
>states (incorrectly) that Simon was with Aral on the day Captain Negri
>died. Apparently, this more dramatic and memorable version of the story
>has superceded the actual events. Later, Miles asks Simon about that day,
>and Simon tells him he was at the capital at the time. Still later, Simon
>mentions that conversation, getting the time of the conversation wrong.
>Since LMB is an economical writer, there is likely some point to bringing
>up this event three times. I began to think about what it was doing there
>in a literary sense.
>
>The event resonates with the themes of "memory" and "beginings and endings"
>in the book. But even more, there may be a connection with Haroche at that
>time. Clues: Haroche is described as coming up through the ranks; Alys
>Vorpatril asked him the unanswered question of where he was during
>Vodarian's Pretendership; and he has thirty years of service. Could
>Haroche have been one of the unnamed Impsec guards around Aral on the day
>Negri brought Gregor to him? It seems possible, and probabilities are no
>obstacle in LMB's plotlines. LMB has created many ironic symmetries, and
>this would be another: the defective corporate memory of Impsec places
>Simon in Haroche's place at the beginning of Simon's tenure as chief, while
>Simon's defective chip memory places Haroche in Simon's place at the end of
>his tenure.
>
>Chuck
>
Yes, I remember the line about Simon getting the job because he happened to
be there when Negri died. Also, IIRC, at about the same time Simon mentions
that it seemed to be a tradition for the head of ImpSec to investigate his
predecessors death. But Simon didn't have to investigate Negri's death; the
cause was pretty cut and dried.
Tony
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 10:06:01 -0900 (PDT)
From: Pat
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: The worst thing that could happen to Miles
Message-ID:
On Thu, 16 Oct 1997, Brad De Long wrote:
> > I came up with this while reading MEMORY, the part where someone
> >brings up the possibility of Laisa's family wanting influence over
> >Gregor. Don't worry about the plot - it's a lot older than I am and Lois
> >is extremely familiar with it already, but here goes -
> > Aral and Cordelia are dead; Miles is on his own. Gregor dies
> >suddenly, leaving Miles as Regent for his minor heirs. Either Laisa's
> >kindred or some equally powerful Barrayaran family who would be a
> >disaster as rulers are opposed to him. Then someone (Dr. Canaba?) comes
> >to Miles with indisuptable proof that the boys are Not The True Heirs.
> >Miles has only one choice ....
> > Yes, of course you recognize the plot. What's worse, *so does miles*.
> >
> >Patricia (Pat) Mathews
> >mathews-+AT+-unm.edu
>
> You mean "Now is the winter of our discontent/ Made glorious summer by this
> son of York;/ And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house/ In the deep
> bosom of the ocean buried."?
>
> Brad De Long
>
Exactly. If this were the Heyer list you'd have won a virtual waltz
with the lady of your choice.> >
>
>
Patricia (Pat) Mathews
mathews-+AT+-unm.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 09:12:26 -0700
From: Chuckson_M_Yokota-+AT+-amat.com
To: lois-bujold-+AT+-herald.co.uk
Subject: Re: Ilyan and Haroche
Message-ID: <88256532.005783A9.00-+AT+-GWSMTPSCLA02.mis.amat.com>
>>Alys
>>Vorpatril asked him the unanswered question of where he was during
>>Vodarian's Pretendership; and he has thirty years of service. Could
>>Haroche have been one of the unnamed Impsec guards around Aral on the day
>>Negri brought Gregor to him? It seems possible,
>Yes... but then, wouldn't that have given him a swift riposte to Alys? "I
>was guarding the person of the Regent!"
Ah, but we have only Alys's report of the conversation; she would have
described the jabs she gave, rather than those she received. My original
intention in pointing out that it was an unaswered question was in
identifying it as a literary device. Unaswered questions can be used by
authors to get the reader's attention for a particular point. I remember
from my freshman English lit. class (thirty years ago) my professor
pointing out the question, "What kind of name is that?" to Stephen Didymus
in _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_.
- Chuck
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End of LOIS-BUJOLD Digest 918
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